RSVP to a Snag
Lightning hollowed you out
death becoming you, the conductor, the container from
the inside out, allowing yourself
to hollow
Offering the driest part of yourself,
the almost-dead part of you—soft, crumbling, becoming
fuel from the inside out.
From there, you held us
inside. Time was Depression Time— You can stay here as long as you would like. Feed on muffled Time here—big maple leaves, squirrels, everything happening through this cavernous veil.
Everything is emptied, in here Everything is hollowed
Everything is remembered I can remember nothing
Take a break from memory— allowing ourselves, you allowing me,
inside you, inside an off-button with no future, all past
You gift me moment. I press a complete pause,
to name my breath
With this space, everything is
empty nothing here nothing resists
my breathing
I’m inside the lungs you’ve made
The container you left behind
Burned xylem holds all of us.
In the fire, your words slowed. You quieted yourself. I heard not re-remembering.
I look to the edges of your toes. I emerge, the blackness started to become itself into dross, my toes shoveling your toes. Being is turning, turning is being, a little bit at a time, of me, of you
I stay, to bring eternity with me into moving time. An eye looking out from the cavern, your charred body a sanctum— a knife of space, careening like the lightning that split you open. A portal, a slit in separation. Re-entering through more space.
Maybe I’ll be empty someday. Maybe I will house someone. Maybe I will hold space. Maybe I will be space. Maybe. An ancestor.
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I didn’t write this poem– about ancestors, about forests, about trees, for Tortuguita. I didn’t know them, but I know they are in my mycelium. I did write it in the weeks leading up to Tort’s death– coincidentally. However, when we live in layers and layers of circular, repressive time, are there coincidences? Are we aligning witness with reality? Is there some presence we are tapping in to, and are we getting something right; even if it comes with heaviness, with grief and weight?
I have so many memories from the Daniel J. Evan’s lobby. The day I learned about Tortuguita’s death, was also the release day for Snag in the Cooper Point Journal’s Poetry Corner. I remember clattering on the lobby tile of epoxied bricks. I sometimes reveled in, and sometimes ripped through, the college’s attempts to insulate us– to support us. The muffling, trying to turn chaotic cacophony into bubbling water. I know my reactions to these sounds aren’t commensurate, or appropriate. I know there is joy and calm here, and kids bubbling with joy about Furry Club and field internships and free popcorn and the Cottonwood Club. I know it’s good. I wish I could stay with this goodness, and not feel lost like the clattering is just screaming. That day I was wearing my earplugs and on to my way to work, walking past all the club tables and people excited about something or other.
I find a friend, who I could lock eyes with. The sounds swimming all around me, pounding the glass windows, knocking my eyes back and forth, trying to steady myself like dandelions gone to seed as wet winds blow against them: “It’s so fucked up,” they would understand. They would come closer and then step back. Like me. Like us. We would get overwhelmed. We would get drawn to the things that exhaust us. We would shut down and withdraw. We would get closer. We would hide and come out. We might do this for the rest of our lives.
So, why a poem in a newspaper? Why turn a tree into a poem? Why put it in paper? Why turn life into language? Why make it tangible, touch it, hold it, have it take up space in a backpack, on a shelf, in a newspaper kiosk? We might stand next to each other– like trees stronger against wind, shoulder to shoulder.
A year later, I am walking with my husband in Tbilisi, and he remarks that he really loves walking in this city because of the trees. The beech trees that line the streets remind me of home, home I can’t go back to because of bullets. Or maybe I turned my back on the places that bear me. Maybe I am to keep moving, to re-arrive always. Maybe this all becomes something, the words borne from this silence, a wrapping, some growing energy. Resistance. Life. Something so good that it takes up too much space, that someone might want to cut it down, even the remembering of it. Because the cops were tearing down their memorial. Because I wanted to remember something good, someone good, even if I hadn’t met them. Because I want us to stick around, to see the good around us now. To keep growing and building.
MoonLit Fern 